QAJF 2011 Home

Introduction
The QAJF conference aims to develop an open interdisciplinary discussion on addressing legal and ethical issues through formal and quantitative models and their computable implementations. Quantification promotes not only comprehensibility and computer based applications but also communication between cultures, and disciplines. Its roots can be found in different cultural traditions.
In particular, the present edition will focus on Proportionality and Justice, and aims at investigating the extent to which formal and quantitative models can be brought to bear on issues pertaining to balancing interests and values of different individuals, social groups and institutions as well as to balancing different sources of information, in different legal, political or social contexts.

General themes
The QAJF conference addresses the use of formal/quantitive methods in connection with any of the the following topics:

  • Ethics, moral theories and theories of human rights (e.g., assessment as of harms & benefits to other persons; quantitative models of justice and fairness)
  • Legal theory (balancing rights and duties; formal and quantitative models of legal argumentation/justification)
  • Law (quantification and the application of the law, e.g., compensation for economic harm, for pain & suffering; criminal punishment and deterrence)
  • Analytical philosophy (ontology and metaphysics of quantification)
  • Science, technology and legal responsibilities (neurosciences and the measurement of mind, assessing environmental and human impacts of dangerous technologies, responsibilities of scientists)
  • Mathematics & Computer science (mathematical and computational approaches to model justice and fairness, e.g., game theory, geometry, fractals, etc)
  • Evidence (mathematical & statistical analysis of factual inferences in trials; burdens of persuasion and proof)
  • Economics (economic and decision-theoretic models of justice and fairness)
  • Medicine & Health care (e.g., measuring the quality of medical care; allocating medical resources, etc)
  • Theology (views in Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc., of quantitative aspects of justice and fairness )

Specific themes
In particular, this edition of the conference, focuses on aspects of proportionality and justice, such as the following:

  • The emergence of the ideal of proportionality in different philosophical, religious and legal traditions
  • Telelological arguments, goals, values and deontology in legal and moral thinking
  • Multicriteria decision-making and social choice
  • Quantitative and non-quantitative models of proportionality
  • Proportionality in distributive and corrective justice
  • Balancing rights and values in moral and legal reasoning
  • Proportionality and judicial review
  • Proportionality and the assessment of evidence
  • Proportionality and justice in tort and criminal law.

Submission Details
The conference will include invited contributions addressing the different aspect of proportionality and justice from different perspectives.

The program committee invites further contributions from other participants in the conference — contributions consisting of original, previously unpublished research papers pertaining to any of these topics. The authors may directly submit their full research paper to the conference, or submit an extended abstract. In case an extended abstract is submitted, the authors will submit a full paper after acceptance of the abstract.

Authors should submit their papers or extended abstracts electronically using the submission system at

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=quajuf2011

Each contribution will be carefully peer-reviewed by a panel of PC members for originality, significance, technical soundness, clarity of exposition and relevance for the conference.
For each accepted contribution, at least one author must register for the conference and make a presentation.

The extended abstract should also be in English, and should be 2-3 pages long.

The paper should be in English, and should be no longer than 15 pages when formatted according the LNCS specifications (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). The first page should contain the full name and contact information for at least one of the authors, and it should contain an abstract of no more than ten lines.

Publication
The proceeding of the conference will be published in book form (approval pending). Revised and extended versions of the accepted papers will be published in peer reviewed journals, such as Artificial Intelligence and Law and Law, Probability and Risk.

Important dates

  • Paper/abstract submission: 15 January 2011
  • Paper/abstract reviews: 30 January 2011
  • Conference: 25-26 February 2011

Authors of accepted abstracts/papers who wish their full paper to be distributed in the conference should upload the final version on Easychair (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=quajuf2011) before the 15th of February.